In all honesty I find David Spade a funny guy. He sure as hell has his critics but thanks to The Emperors new Groove and his turn in T.V show 8 Simple Rules I am just not amongst them.
It was Spade who conceived the idea for Dickie Roberts Former Child Star, which basically sees a child Star from the 70"s looking for a comeback. The Story sees Dickie Roberts played by Spade, a washed up Child Star now looking for a 21st Century comeback now in his 30"s in a new Rob Reiner film. However Reiner thinks due to the lack of a normal childhood Dickie just isn"t right for the part. However so desperate is Dickie, that he hires out a normal Suburban family for a month so as to grasp the basic elements of the childhood he never had.
The family are fairly Stereotypical characters, the Mother who is hyper nice, the father who just plain ain"t there most of the time and two kids who are taking the brunt of the families problems. The mother played by Mary McCormack has the most screen time of the brood, and so it"s a problem to find out she is also the weakest performer. She flits through each scene in a daze or overacting terribly. Craig Bierko who is a genuinely good actor plays the father, who as mentioned above is NEVER THERE! That means one of our strongest actors is absent for the majority of the feature. So far not great but thanks to David Spade and the young thespians playing the kids the movie pulls something back. Scott Terra and Jenna Boyd are good actors based on this, and names to look out for in the future. Then Spade himself who quite frankly can carry anything out of the poor zone. His sarcastic quips and risqué humour (sadly toned down here) run amok throughout the script and even after a bum gag you start to realize Spade will pull it back.
However the rest of the film is a totally mixed bag, Director Sam Wiseman is an expert at making the slapstick work, but talky sequences become very syrupy and saccharine under his guidance. Support is totally forgettable with no real names, apart from the various "real" child stars who appear throughout the film, and in reality most of them have been long forgotten.
On a gags to hit and gags that miss ratio its about 50-50 in this particular film, which really isn"t good enough, for you to part with your cash on. I enjoyed it and in all fairness it was well paced and knew when it had run its course, but calling it a satisfying comedy is pushing it.
There is a great comedy in Dickie Roberts Child Star, and David Spade is the right guy for the role but everything else is out of place, and these factors have turned it into fun mediocrity but mediocrity none the less.